TomoCredit, a five-year-old San Francisco startup that claims it boosts consumers’ credit scores, is facing a growing number of problems, with the latest being a new lawsuit alleging trademark infringement and unfair competition. New York-based analytics company Prism Data sued TomoCredit on Tuesday, accusing it of infringing on Prism’s trademark for its CashScore service. Prism’s CashScore product uses consumers’ cash flow (including bank account transactions) to assess their creditworthiness.
In response to questions Forbes sent to Tomo about the suit, the company’s general counsel Fred Ghodoosi wrote to us in an email, “We are aware of the lawsuit and are actively investigating the matter. We anticipate being able to provide a formal comment on the lawsuit within the coming weeks.”
The new lawsuit adds to an already lengthy list of troubles Tomo is facing. In October, Forbes reported that the startup had received hundreds of consumer complaints over the past year for making it difficult to cancel its subscription service (that same month, Tomo finally added an online option to cancel its service). Less than two weeks later, we reported that the three major credit bureaus–Experian, TransUnion and Equifax–had terminated their data-sharing relationships with Tomo.
Have a story tip? Contact Jeff Kauflin at [email protected] or on Signal at jeff.273.
Prism’s new lawsuit makes colorful claims about interactions it has had with Tomo over the past six months. Prism says it originally applied for its CashScore trademark in 2022 and was granted it in August 2023, while Tomo didn’t start using the term CashScore publicly until 2024, after launching its own credit score product. When Prism asked Tomo to stop using the words “Cash Score” and “CashScore,” Tomo said CashScore was a widely used term, its service wasn’t competitive with Prism’s and it wasn’t required to do anything without proof of buyer confusion over the two companies’ products.
Tomo then said it had been using the CashScore term as far back as 2018, according to the suit, even though Tomo was founded in 2019. When Prism asked for proof, Tomo allegedly fabricated evidence by altering its own blog posts to retroactively add the word CashScore. Prism Data founder and CEO Jason Rosen tells Forbes, “We’ve spent many years and millions of dollars building Prism’s CashScore product and brand, and take both extremely seriously. We have no tolerance for would-be competitors using our trademarked brand name to market their own products.”
Separate from the Prism lawsuit, Tomo has also made multiple changes to its website over the past two months related to its reporting to the credit bureaus. Since launching its TomoBoost credit-builder product in 2023, Tomo has claimed it improves consumers’ credit scores by opening a line of credit for them and reporting it to Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. In late October 2024, Forbes reported that all three bureaus had ended their relationships with Tomo, and at least two of them had asked the startup to remove their logos from its website. (Tomo CEO Kristy Kim responded that our article was “inaccurate” but failed to grant an interview or answer any questions over email.) By November 4, Tomo had removed all three credit bureaus’ logos from its homepage, though it kept language that read “Raise your credit score” and “access credit building loan and tools to build your score with all three bureaus,” according to screenshots Forbes recorded.
By November 19, the language had changed to, “Access credit building loan and tools to build your score,” removing any mention of the bureaus. Today, the “Raise your credit score” language has been replaced with “Monitor your credit score,” and mention of the bureaus remains absent. At the top of Tomo’s website, which previously read “Credit Building Starts Here” in big letters throughout November, it now says, “Know Your Credit Score.”
Yet when you visit Tomo’s pricing page for the TomoBoost subscription service it offers consumers, Tomo still claims its VIP plan offers “Up to 30,000 credit line,” an “instant credit boost” and “all major bureau support.” The most perplexing and concerning part of it all: TomoBoost still appears to be accepting new customers, charging prices ranging from $8.33 a month to $129.99 a month, depending on the tier of service and whether you’re billed monthly or annually. If the bureaus have cut Tomo off, it’s hard to imagine how the service could have any significant impact on consumers’ credit scores.
Read the full article here
